Prompt: "A song with exactly thirteen characters in its title"
Selected by Joe
"Explain It to Me"
Liz Phair
Exile in Guyville, 1993
We as humans have a tendency to try to find meaning in completely random and unrelated phenomena. It's called apophenia. I think the finding connections between two unrelated things can be a fun activity to while away the time. If it gets too serious, then it starts to be a little too weird for me. But if you wanna just fuck around with apophenia, then that's totally cool with me.
Numerology is pretty silly, and I think it would be inappropriate to take it too seriously, but still, we're just fucking around today on the blog. Can't do any harm to google something like "what does the number 13 mean." The answer, I'm told by ad-strewn astrology websites, is that thirteen is the "feminine number." I see the logic. Thirteen menstruation cycles throughout the year (13x28=364). If I was looking for MEANING and CONNECTION here, I could say something like "hey that's pretty cool that I randomly dropped this too-broad YSC prompt into the month of March which is otherwise known as Women's History Month," and ignore the fact that there was a hefty one-in-twelve chance that the prompt and the month would line up, and ignore the fact that thirteen could mean anything you want it to mean, like as far as I know it's kinda common for the number to pop up in horror fiction, like your typical haunted house might have the address of 13 Dead Man's Lane or whatever, also let's not forget it's National Social Work Month, during which the upper reaches of my chain of command will do the absolutely bare minimum to pretend that our mental and emotional well-being means a single shit to them, and during which I'll be treated to a free soft pretzel handout offer on a day that I'm not scheduled to work in the office.
But if I'm taking numerology for its word, then I should probably pick a song from a female artist.
Numerology is pretty silly, and I think it would be inappropriate to take it too seriously, but still, we're just fucking around today on the blog. Can't do any harm to google something like "what does the number 13 mean." The answer, I'm told by ad-strewn astrology websites, is that thirteen is the "feminine number." I see the logic. Thirteen menstruation cycles throughout the year (13x28=364). If I was looking for MEANING and CONNECTION here, I could say something like "hey that's pretty cool that I randomly dropped this too-broad YSC prompt into the month of March which is otherwise known as Women's History Month," and ignore the fact that there was a hefty one-in-twelve chance that the prompt and the month would line up, and ignore the fact that thirteen could mean anything you want it to mean, like as far as I know it's kinda common for the number to pop up in horror fiction, like your typical haunted house might have the address of 13 Dead Man's Lane or whatever, also let's not forget it's National Social Work Month, during which the upper reaches of my chain of command will do the absolutely bare minimum to pretend that our mental and emotional well-being means a single shit to them, and during which I'll be treated to a free soft pretzel handout offer on a day that I'm not scheduled to work in the office.
But if I'm taking numerology for its word, then I should probably pick a song from a female artist.
At first I was like hey I should choose a thirteen-lettered song from a thirteen-lettered artist, maybe even with a thirteen-lettered album name too, but that task proved too difficult, even scrolling through the ol' trusty iPod, and finally I gave up after I listened to "Miss Disregard" by Lake Street Dive on Lake Street Dive like thirteen times in a row before realizing that the phrase "Lake Street Dive" actually has fourteen letters, and yes, I probably need glasses, but I've lived 35 years of my life without them and the transition is going to be difficult and I'm gonna hold on as a glassesless person for as long as I possibly can. But then I had the bright idea to look at the soundtrack for the movie Thirteen, which, true, doesn't have thirteen letters in its title, but does—in case you didn't notice—intimately involve the number thirteen, and sure enough, there was a song on there by Liz Phair (only eight characters) called "Explain It to Me" (thirteen characters, prompt achieved) from the album Exile in Guyville (fifteen characters), an album I only have a passing familiarity with, have heard a bunch of times in my life, and it exists on my iPod but I've never really made a connection, ya feel me, and this tepid relationship definitely mirrors in some regards my experience with the movie Thirteen, one I watched when I was older than thirteen but still young enough that I was probably too young to watch it, and the only parts I remember are the parts that scared me in the way that they stirred up that pubescent hormonal stew in my brain in not unwelcome ways while at the same time being clear to me that this was not the intent of the film, hence the being too young, and impressionable but thankfully not so much so that I got the wrong impression from this film.
Anyways, the song.
I'm told that the eighteen (not thirteen) songs on Exile in Guyville are song-by-song responses to the eighteen songs featured on Exile on Main St. (which does not have thirteen characters in its name if you count the period, which I do) by the Rolling Stones (also not thirteen, unless you don't count the "the," and plus obviously not feminine). This means that "Explain It to Me" is the response to "Torn and Frayed" (which, incredibly, also has thirteen characters in its title, but I can't imagine that this was on purpose... right?). It makes sense thematically. Both seem to be about rock stars who are pushed past their limit and become unstuck in time and place, condemned to live on the road and only finds sanity on the stage, meaning that he's chained there. Note that both songs, including Phair's, are of the male perspective. Third-person omniscient, perhaps. Plenty of he/him/his pronouns to go around. Viewed from the number thirteen / the female number / Women's History Month, this is interesting, though I guess remember the timing of this thing. 1993. Rock being thoroughly male-centric, even more so than it is today. Female rock icons of the time like Courtney Love being derided and then seriously blamed for the death of her rock star husband. Liz Phair isn't operating within the confines of the Bechdel test. The exact opposite. Look at the title of the album. Look at the album she is allegedly responding to. This is a female response to the male-centric viewpoint. "Explain It to Me" is a counterpoint among many counterpoints to that single and misguided point of male superiority. I shouldn't make too much of it though, I guess. Consider Phair's explanation of the song in a 2018 Rolling Stone interview: "It’s about a ruined rock hero and seeing one of your greatest figures at their weakest, I guess." Let's not let the necessary gender politics obscure the empathy found here too. Here is a person—man, but a person—who is struggling, and here is a narrator—female, if we are taking for granted that Phair is the one speaking, which may or may not be true, but nevertheless a person—who is seeing this from a slight remove and wondering how it makes sense for a person to treat themselves this way. Here's a line in the song that has thirteen characters: "Kiss the gravel." If we're taking numerology seriously here, then what does this thirteen-charactered line MEAN? How it's important to feel the safety of home? How dangerous it is out there? How things means more to us when we're away from them for long periods of time? How old AA meetings used to make addicts literally chew feldspar to prove just how willing they were to do anything to remain sober?
And then like if you like google a slight variation of the original question and type in "what does the number 15 mean," because the final line of the song switches from "explain it to me" to "explain them to me," you'll find that fifteen is the angel number, that it means that "all your hard work and dedication will be fully rewarded," which maybe if we're doing the numerology thing for real today we might say something like the character in Liz Phair's song has stumbled upon a revelation with lips caked with tiny rocks and stones that this pursuit of greatness is worth it, no matter the cost, no matter the pain, that he knows within himself that he will jump higher and run farther if asked because he knows now that his dedication will pay off if he does it for long enough, is basically what the NUMBERS are telling us, which, yeah, seems pretty silly to me, I guess, and seems like kind of a myopic view of this song, that maybe if we're being a little more grounded here we can understand that Phair is absolutely not saying that the character in this song is doing something that any reasonable person would do, but we can use the numbers to trick ourselves, you see. Finding something in the randomness of nothing. Apophenia, baby.
It's silly but it also can be fun, to talk about art in deeper ways than "is this good or is this bad." Not explaining the song through the symbolism of numbers but more so using that symbolism as a starting point, as a way to find something to chat about. Not sure I would've given a shit about this song if it wasn't for the number thirteen twisting my fate so that I relistened to it thirteen times today and attempted to consider a deeper meaning than "the kind of boring song from the slightly removed so-called masterpiece from '90s rocker Liz Phair." No harm in this. It's basically what I do every day we're here for YSC. Take a song based on an arbitrary prompt, and pile enough words on top so that its meaning changes, or some deeper meaning is discovered, or some shit like that.
Anyways, the song.
I'm told that the eighteen (not thirteen) songs on Exile in Guyville are song-by-song responses to the eighteen songs featured on Exile on Main St. (which does not have thirteen characters in its name if you count the period, which I do) by the Rolling Stones (also not thirteen, unless you don't count the "the," and plus obviously not feminine). This means that "Explain It to Me" is the response to "Torn and Frayed" (which, incredibly, also has thirteen characters in its title, but I can't imagine that this was on purpose... right?). It makes sense thematically. Both seem to be about rock stars who are pushed past their limit and become unstuck in time and place, condemned to live on the road and only finds sanity on the stage, meaning that he's chained there. Note that both songs, including Phair's, are of the male perspective. Third-person omniscient, perhaps. Plenty of he/him/his pronouns to go around. Viewed from the number thirteen / the female number / Women's History Month, this is interesting, though I guess remember the timing of this thing. 1993. Rock being thoroughly male-centric, even more so than it is today. Female rock icons of the time like Courtney Love being derided and then seriously blamed for the death of her rock star husband. Liz Phair isn't operating within the confines of the Bechdel test. The exact opposite. Look at the title of the album. Look at the album she is allegedly responding to. This is a female response to the male-centric viewpoint. "Explain It to Me" is a counterpoint among many counterpoints to that single and misguided point of male superiority. I shouldn't make too much of it though, I guess. Consider Phair's explanation of the song in a 2018 Rolling Stone interview: "It’s about a ruined rock hero and seeing one of your greatest figures at their weakest, I guess." Let's not let the necessary gender politics obscure the empathy found here too. Here is a person—man, but a person—who is struggling, and here is a narrator—female, if we are taking for granted that Phair is the one speaking, which may or may not be true, but nevertheless a person—who is seeing this from a slight remove and wondering how it makes sense for a person to treat themselves this way. Here's a line in the song that has thirteen characters: "Kiss the gravel." If we're taking numerology seriously here, then what does this thirteen-charactered line MEAN? How it's important to feel the safety of home? How dangerous it is out there? How things means more to us when we're away from them for long periods of time? How old AA meetings used to make addicts literally chew feldspar to prove just how willing they were to do anything to remain sober?
And then like if you like google a slight variation of the original question and type in "what does the number 15 mean," because the final line of the song switches from "explain it to me" to "explain them to me," you'll find that fifteen is the angel number, that it means that "all your hard work and dedication will be fully rewarded," which maybe if we're doing the numerology thing for real today we might say something like the character in Liz Phair's song has stumbled upon a revelation with lips caked with tiny rocks and stones that this pursuit of greatness is worth it, no matter the cost, no matter the pain, that he knows within himself that he will jump higher and run farther if asked because he knows now that his dedication will pay off if he does it for long enough, is basically what the NUMBERS are telling us, which, yeah, seems pretty silly to me, I guess, and seems like kind of a myopic view of this song, that maybe if we're being a little more grounded here we can understand that Phair is absolutely not saying that the character in this song is doing something that any reasonable person would do, but we can use the numbers to trick ourselves, you see. Finding something in the randomness of nothing. Apophenia, baby.
It's silly but it also can be fun, to talk about art in deeper ways than "is this good or is this bad." Not explaining the song through the symbolism of numbers but more so using that symbolism as a starting point, as a way to find something to chat about. Not sure I would've given a shit about this song if it wasn't for the number thirteen twisting my fate so that I relistened to it thirteen times today and attempted to consider a deeper meaning than "the kind of boring song from the slightly removed so-called masterpiece from '90s rocker Liz Phair." No harm in this. It's basically what I do every day we're here for YSC. Take a song based on an arbitrary prompt, and pile enough words on top so that its meaning changes, or some deeper meaning is discovered, or some shit like that.
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